Diffused
by secedo
Summary: Lucas' Christmas Eve plans get altered dramatically at the last minute and he ends up having to spend the night at Maya's where there are questions to answer and situations to diffuse.


It was Christmas Eve and Lucas was supposed to be on a plane on his way back to Austin to celebrate the holidays with his family. His mother had flown out a week before but Lucas had stayed back until the last possible second to help with the live nativity manger he'd signed up to do with the local petting zoo - part of being a senior now meant a work study program for college credit.

The problem was though, New York City was experiencing a pretty bad snowstorm. He was about halfway to the airport in a cab when it became clear that traffic just wasn't going to allow them to go any further.

He wasn't sure what to do. Here he was, stuck in traffic with the meter running and it wasn't like he could just go back. Traffic was backed up behind them now too. What was worse was that the driver had turned on the radio only to find that the airport had been completely shut down anyway. Now he had an even bigger problem.

It only took him a few minutes to realize through the thick falling snow that he was only a block or two away from Maya's apartment. His mother had taken the bulk of their luggage with her so that Lucas didn't have to deal with baggage claim when he landed and could get back to the house quickly to enjoy the festivities.

He decided without much thought that his best bet was to just pay the cabby (which he was not happy about since he now had to sit in the traffic without even getting paid for it) and pray that Maya was home tonight and not at the Matthews' for the holiday.

It took longer to make the trek than it should have. The snow was piled up around the middle of his shins on the uncleared sidewalk. He debated using the fire escape but quickly decided against risking an icy fall to his death. He scanned down the call box with his finger looking for the Hunter button. He'd only used the door to her building once since Maya and her mother moved in with Shawn.

He heaved the heaviest sigh of relief he'd ever heaved when he heard Maya come over the intercom asking who was there.

"It's Lucas, can I come up?" He could almost hear the way her brows furrowed in the pause between button presses. It was a weirdly long time before he heard the buzz of the door unlocking. He made his way up to her apartment and the door opened before he could even knock on it.

Sure enough, there stood Maya with a look of utter confusion on her face and her brows furrowed just the way Lucas had imagined. "What are you doing here, Cowboy?"

The truth was, Maya and Lucas weren't exactly friends anymore. They weren't not friends, Farkle remained a connection between them, sometimes Zay. There hadn't been a fallout or anything, they'd just mostly gone their separate ways in high school. Maya and Riley were still the best of friends and they were all still close with Farkle. Maya and Zay ran with the same crowd, and obviously Zay and Lucas were still like brothers, but there was no real group anymore.

Lucas couldn't actually remember the last time he'd spoken to Maya one on one. He hadn't really considered that when he'd gotten out of that cab. Maya's apartment was warm and dry though.

"I was on my way to the airport and the roads got pretty snowed in. I was only a block or so from here so," he trailed off and shrugged innocently. "I decided to take my chances."

It was almost as if Maya had forgotten about the snow entirely until Lucas mentioned it and she immediately looked him over and reached out to pull him inside. "You're soaking wet, Jesus, you're going to get sick." She took note of the fact that his hands were cold as ice when she'd pulled him. "I'll grab you something to wear and then put on some coffee. Go get out of that stuff," she told him as she started shuffling toward what he assumed was her mother and Shawn's room since he knew it wasn't the direction of her own.

He did as she told him and went to the small bathroom to get out of his wet clothes. It didn't take long before she knocked and told him that there was a change of clothes outside the door and that she would be in the kitchen. He was grateful for the warm sweatpants and the long sleeved shirt she'd found for him and he put them on quickly before going out to meet her in the other room.

"Thank you, this is so much better. I'm sorry for just showing up I just couldn't sit in that taxi anymore and the airport closed anyway," he explained now that he could focus on something other than freezing to death.

She turned around from her spot at the counter and faced him with a look he'd never seen on her before. He wasn't sure if he should be scared or if he'd just never noticed new looks Maya had picked up over the years. They weren't really friends but he'd never stopped noticing her though so he was pretty sure that wasn't the case.

"Well, I'm glad you still think of me as a safe place," she said finally, almost sadly. She recovered before Lucas could respond though, catching him a little off guard as she moved through the room to grab cream and a couple of mugs. "Besides, I was supposed to go to Riley's but the snow killed that and my parents are snowed in at the cafe."

"So you would have woken up alone on Christmas morning then," Lucas finished for her. He probably would have woken up alone on Christmas morning too, only in a taxi cab. He didn't feel like he'd intruded anymore.

"I mean, I'm pretty used to it. My mom still works all the time and Shawn's gone on his trips half the time. Riley's preoccupied with school. Alone is still what I do best."

He couldn't tell if she was really okay with that because her back was to him and she was pouring coffee as she spoke. One thing he did know about Maya was that she'd perfected the art of masking the hurt in her tone when she spoke of home. She was so used to everybody making those jokes at her expense that she'd mastered it herself.

He played it safe and offered her a small smile of thanks as she handed him his coffee over the island between them. They didn't speak as they took turns putting in their desired amounts of cream and sugar, but once they were settled Maya nodded toward the living room to tell him to follow.

She set her drink down on the coffee table in front of the couch and gathered up some blankets and pillows before settling down next to the spot Lucas had already claimed. "So you'll probably be staying here tonight then," she said finally, earning a wordless nod in response.

"If that's okay. I can always dig my way home, or to a hotel or something." He was really hoping that Maya wouldn't take him up on that. He was pretty sure the hotels in the city were all booked by now and he lived pretty far away. He wasn't sure if he could take another walk through that.

"No, my god, don't be crazy. You're fine," she assured him. She took a sip of her coffee and cocked her head to the side in question, ignoring the thank you he was spouting out. "Hey so I've always wondered," she started, seeming slightly nervous. "Why did we stop being friends?"

She knew why he stopped being friends with Riley. She'd gone a little bonkers on both of them after she'd had too much tug of war, (a game that only she had been playing, if Maya was being honest,) and had cut off contact with the both of them. She knew that Riley and Lucas had never really been just friends and rekindling anything resembling that would be more effort than it was worth.

She and Lucas though, they'd never had a fallout. They'd never been on bad terms and as far as she knew she'd never personally made Lucas uncomfortable with the feelings thing that Riley projected on the three of them. She couldn't actually remember when it was that their friendship even ended.

Lucas looked at her incredulously but then sighed. He opened his mouth as if he was about to answer a few times, but no sound escaped. He hadn't really thought about it. Or maybe he'd thought about it too much. "Well Riley hated us both and that was over even the idea that you were interested in me. I guess I distanced myself because I didn't want to be what ruined your friendship entirely if she got even more mad that you and I stayed close but she and I didn't."

Maya looked down at the floor and pursed her lips. It was clear that she was going to respond, that she just needed the time to process what he'd said to her. It made sense but it didn't at the same time. "Can I tell you something that you won't believe," she asked almost as if it was already unbelievable even to herself.

"You can tell me whatever you want." It seemed like it was going to be a night for laying it all out on the table. Really, he shouldn't have been surprised about it. He's shown up after years of cutting off their friendship and they weren't able to actually run from the tension. It was actually the perfect night for uncomfortable honesty.

But Maya was looking at him in a way that made him feel a little judged. He couldn't tell what she was thinking but this wasn't a normal look. The truth was that she was just trying to suss out whether or not he was ready to hear what she had to say. Whether or not he'd take her seriously. It was a bomb and she knew that, so to say it and be laughed at or walked away from would be the least pleasant thing she could imagine.

"I would have picked you."

There was a look on her face that nearly broke Lucas in two. She looked downright prepared for rejection and nothing else. One thing he knew about Maya was that she expected this. It killed him that he'd walked away from her just like everyone else. It killed him even more that she clearly expected him to now after telling him this.

It was serious, what she said. She would have chosen what she had with Lucas over the sisterhood she shared with Riley. No, Lucas would never have expected that. And maybe that had something to do with why he slowly backed out of her life. He never expected to win when Riley inevitably told her to choose.

"I think," Lucas started, looking at a spot behind Maya on the wall as he searched for the right words, and then when he found them mulled them over to make sure they were truthful. He nodded when he decided they were, even though Maya had no idea what the gesture would mean. "I think I would have let you. I think I left because I was afraid you wouldn't, but I think I always told myself that it was because if it came down to it I wouldn't allow it. I think I would have though."

He knew he had negated everything he'd said at the beginning of the conversation and it only served to make the both of them realize that the answers weren't clear even to Lucas. This entire four year old situation was still so fresh and so unresolved.

Maya was looking at him sadly and he could tell that with both of their admissions she was mourning the many lost years they'd given up by not bothering to seek the other out and talk honestly about what was going on. Had they just trusted one another to not hurt them all of this could have been avoided. But they hadn't and it wasn't. The question now was where to go from there.

Reaching forward to take the hand in front of her, Maya did something that she always avoided -she thought about the future. She didn't lace their fingers together, she simply toyed with his fingers absently, familiarizing herself with him once again. "And now here we are and we have half a school year left and then another four years nowhere near one another. Exactly what we just did because even if I saw you every day we were nowhere near one another."

It was Lucas' turn to drop a bomb because he knew exactly what Maya was thinking in that moment. "So I don't know where you're planning on going next year but I sent in all of my applications two weeks ago and four out of six of them were in driving distance. The only way I'm moving back to Texas is if I get some deal of a lifetime and everyone else rejects me."

He saw her face light up with just the smallest bit of hope and it gave him a little himself. His hope was that she wouldn't be one of those someones rejecting him. "So if we were to..." She tapered off not knowing how to word what she was trying to say, settling for a gesture between the two of them that Lucas understood to mean something along the lines of 'be an us' causing him to nod for her to continue. "We'd actually be close. See each other regularly close. Maybe in the halls at NYU close?"

He chuckled and nodded as he took her hands a little more romantically. "If you're asking if we have the same plans then yes, NYU was my plan. You know you can stop dancing around me right? I think we're on the same page here. If either of us was going to run I think we both would have done it a few questions ago."

He watched as she softened dramatically at his words, knowing that he'd helped to make her feel calm and realizing how much he'd missed that connection.

He knew there were still plenty of obstacles but they were outside the apartment where the snow would keep them away for right now. Right now the only things they had to worry about were what they could scrounge up for a Christmas dinner and how they were supposed to make it if they refused to stop touching one another.


End file.
